Demeter hurried onwards through the night, never faltering, a strange kind of growing dread clutching her heart.
She had been hard at work in Attica, the kingdom that had shown her such kindness when she had been mad with grief at the apparent loss of Persephone. The new ruler, one of the children she had nursed, was anxious that his reign should be filled with peace and prosperity. He was quick to honour the gods and goddesses, especially Demeter who had almost completed the process to make his brother an immortal. To this day the prince of Attica was healthier, more handsome and stronger than mortals, even if he was still able to be killed. The new Mysteries of the Triple Goddess had been established quickly into his kingdom and already the people were thriving. Demetr had been well pleased at the king's efforts and her divine influence ensured that the land was fertile and lush, that the calves were fat in the field and that the harvest was bountiful.
But still, she was so afraid.
She had been dreaming - which was very unlike her - of her past. She supposed that with all the work she Hecate and Persephone had been doing she had not noticed herself fatiguing, and would often stop to rest her tired feet in the pond and let her eyelids droop in the heat. With the smell of barley and fresh grass she had been prone to drift over the past few days and with these daydream trances came visions. They were incredible in their lucidity and she had realised this night that they were her memories surfacing back to her of her past. They were full of blood and tumult, screeching and agony, terror that made her whole body go numb and a debilitating kind of disorientation as her mind seemed to float beyond the comforting safety of her body, locked out of the flesh that she could fight back with against the tide of horrors that tormented her right to her core.
They were visions of the Maw.
Demeter's earliest memories of life before the Maw were incredibly vague, as though all of the terrors she had endured had wiped any kind of recollection of her origins. She knew only what the other deities had told her about how it had all began. Kronos the titan was her father – a name that filled her with intense, crippling horror. Demeter was always forced to recall Kronos as a vast shadow of gargantuan proportions, high and freezing, looming over her with eternal eyes. Demeter didn't know who her real mother was; she had been the result of some affair of Kronos's that no one ever challenged him on. Kronos's wedded wife – the titan Rhea – only gave birth to Kronos's legitimate sons Poseidon, Hades and Zeus. They were the only real blood siblings amongst Kronos's children. The rest of those Kronos considered born of his indiscretions – Hera, Hestia and Demeter herself – thought of Rhea's boys as their brothers in the sense that they had all suffered, all despaired together and were all treated to the same process of being ripped apart and managed to pull each other back together again.
Demeter huffed past a forest, thinking idly of the strange motley crew of her family. She didn't notice that her fingers had begun to tremble in the warm, still night.
Zeus seems to be the only one to have inherited his father's promiscuity. Thank the heavens Hades seems to have not, she considered as she trudged on with her memories weighing heavily on her mind.
Kronos had been driven to act in a manner of unspeakable cruelty as he had heard of a prophecy that dictated that as he had thrown down his father Ouranos, so too would one of his children throw him down. He grew terrified of any deity that may be of his lineage and sought each of his children out, no matter who their mothers were, and threw them into a specially designed prison known as the Maw.
No wonder the mortals think that Kronos literally 'swallowed' us, Demeter thought as she sighted a village in the distance. The temple torches burnt bright and red in the darkness and she moved towards their comforting glow. They're not far from the truth.
The young gods and goddesses were ingested into the foul pit of misery and confusion Kronos had created to deal with the prophecy. In this terrible prison, tiny newborn deities did not have a prayer. The Maw took every semblance of identity and hope and feeling from the individual it ensnared, dragging the deities' minds from their bodies and tormenting them with the feeling of disempowerment, despair, disorientation and helplessness. They could feel each other's horrors but they didn't know where one person began and the other ended until all any of the children knew was a swirling mass of nightmares and pain. In that torture they didn't realise they weren't alone, they couldn't comprehend escape and their bodies wasted away as unused husks in the black pit of misery.
They didn't know how to fight. They didn't know how to struggle. They just endured, crippling away under the tortures devised by the fears of their father.
Rhea had watched on in horror as Poseidon was locked in the Maw first. Demeter thought it likely that some of his emotional rages were due to the sufferings he had endured the longest out of any of them. Poor Poseidon was in there quite a few years before Hestia joined him. Then Demeter herself was ripped, thrown, cast in with the two other beings she would one day call siblings. She could vaguely recall Rhea's soft presence telling her who she was, calling her by the name Demeter and swearing that she would bring about their salvation. It had almost become entirely lost in amongst all the terrors but in Rhea's presence Demeter gained some semblance of the fact that she was a person, that she mattered, that there was something outside of this prison. She remembered clinging to that during the worst times. She remembered calling on Hestia and Poseidon to cling to Rhea's calm promise too, when they became almost overwhelmed. It stabilised them for a time.
Hera came after that. Once again Rhea swore she would help them escape and they bitterly clung to that. Then Hades. Rhea's wracking sobs as her little boy was plucked from her breast and cast into the Maw was a searing recollection in Demeter's mind. No wonder Hades was such a strong, silent character considering how his life had begun.
Demeter remembered. She had been so close to them all, swearing oaths of vengeance, swearing that there had to be a way out like all children do in the face of great adversity. Hades and his brother in particular in light of their mother's oath reminded them all that there was going to be an end to this terror someday and they all just had to endure until that day. They would not give up, the boys promised. Their conviction was staggering considering the ongoing cruelty of their father.
Meanwhile Rhea had been true to her word and every day they all suffered she cast her will on a stone, over and over again, melding the charm to the piece of rock until the fateful day that she was due to give birth to Zeus. She was hidden in a cave by the Curetes, minor deities and great soldiers who swore faithfully that the Queen of the World should have her son and heir safe from her husband's Maw. She gave birth in secret and took the enchanted stone to Kronos in substitute of his child. Her great will had over time cast a charm on the rock so it resembled a newborn babe. The quality of her work was enough to deceive the powerful and perceptive titan. All of her hard days of effort paid off when the titan was tricked and threw the stone – not Zeus – into the Maw.
In that stone lay all of Kronos's children's secret wishes. The moment they had realised what Rhea had managed to accomplish, Demeter remembered laughing for the first time. The heady, giddy feeling of triumph was entirely new to her and the others, who set about laughing themselves stupid until they felt something other than their constant dismay. Demeter could recall in that moment realising that they were separate entities, that they were together in this and they had the strength to resist.
Baby Zeus, the youngest son of Rhea. How all of our hopes lay on him. I wept and begged and screamed myself through the days and nights… Oh, Zeus. You grew up hearing our frustrations, our desperate lamentations… Whatever you desired in the whole of creation was yours the instant you freed us all.
Zeus had been mightier than Rhea could have dreamt possible. He was able to safely reach in and work his will on the Maw. His strength grew and he called on his brothers and half-sisters. He gave them back their sanity. He gave them rebirth and for the first time each of the children returned to their flesh bodies and began to grow up into the formidable divine beings they would become. Because of this rebirth Zeus is considered both the oldest and youngest of the children of Kronos, a concept that Demeter and the others who had experienced it found a simple one but she knew the mortals would never fully understand.
He helped them to mature. He showed them a way through their fears. He promised redemption. In secret, the gods and goddesses overcame their prison with the help of each other and Zeus taught them warfare.
Not much has changed, reflected Demeter, a bit sad at the thought. Zeus still believes force and power to be the brunt of getting everything. Hestia and I settled down to embrace our newfound peace after the Titans War. I don't think the others ever did, really. After all we struggled for, we are still paying the price for our freedom.
After the phenomenal effort involved in capturing Kronos in his own prison, tearing his mind and will and body apart and crushing them into the depths of the Maw then putting down the titan resistance, the majesty of the realms was divided between the three true brothers. Zeus the saviour took Hera, the heavens and Mount Olympus as his own, fulfilling the prophecy. Poseidon took the seas as his realm and wallowed in his power over the elements, commanding a whole host of fantastic sea beasts and ruling the water deities. Hades was given the task of the realm of the Dead, guardian of the Maw in Tartarus and ruler of the Underworld.
This is all history, Demeter fretted. Why am I reliving this against my will?
Something was very wrong and Demeter thought that perhaps it had something to do with the Maw. Tartarus was a place she never thought of if she could help it. Now her daughter, her only beautiful daughter, had joined Hades in guarding the realms against that which was imprisoned in those depths. Demeter shuddered.
Kronos is in there, she considered dourly. He won't give up. He'll never give up. We never did when we were trapped in there and we were just children. The Maw may have driven him mad but in madness he is still capable of being powerful and cunning.
Demeter hurried onwards, praying that Hermes would return to the realm above so that she may speak with him and soothe her anxieties a little. She considered asking Hestia if she was also experiencing flashbacks of their father and their imprisonment but she dreaded considering what it might mean if she was.
Be strong Hades. Demeter found herself reaching out with her will in a desperate way that she had not tried since Persephone vanished or she had been stuck in the Maw. Be strong for my girl. Be strong for all of creation. Don't let Kronos see your new wife as a weakness worth exploiting. Persephone is a brand new immortal, inexperienced and raw. Guard her well, Lord of the Dead.
She reached the temple and swept herself inside, invisible so that any mortal attendants did not glimpse her fearful face. Demeter needed to clear her mind of her worries and place her faith in the Fates that spun the stories of the future. She knelt, her golden dress splaying behind her, before the altar in the dark and began to pray to Hermes to come forth before her and reassure her that her nightmares were just the nonsense of a tired and stressed mother missing her child.